Defections are ‘good thing', claims Badenoch
Addressing members of the party, she said 'Scottish people deserve better' than another five years of the SNP – the party currently leading in the polls ahead of next year's election – while also announcing her party would scrap the windfall tax on oil and gas if it wins back power at the next UK-wide vote.
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The Herald Scotland
17 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Do the Scottish Conservatives have any reason to exist?
Before dismissing this prospect out of hand, consider the point that political parties are manufactured, not innate. They are coalitions of the more or less willing, designed to provide a vaguely coherent offer to the electorate in order to secure power and effect change. Consequently, they have no guaranteed right to exist. Anyone remember the squadrone volante? In the old, pre-Union Scots Parliament, they steered a cautious middle way between the Court and Country parties, before eventually sinking into oblivion. OK, so that is an obscure recollection. Consider this instead. In the 19th century, the Liberals were utterly dominant in Scottish politics. Their role was largely usurped by the Labour Party. The Tories battled on. They secured, in 1955, the only popular majority ever achieved by any party in Scotland since universal suffrage. But that was a Unionist vote. As times changed, and the SNP rose, the Tories struggled again, eventually losing every Scottish Westminster seat in 1997. They were only rescued as a party by the advent of devolution and by proportional representation. Two developments they had steadfastly opposed. And more recently? They flourished to a degree under Ruth Davidson's leadership. She contrived to corral pro-Union votes to her side by depicting her party as the most reliable bulwark for that Union. And now? Two points. Indyref2 seems relatively distant, meaning that the political focus is elsewhere. The Davidson bulwark has less clout. Read more from Brian Taylor: Secondly, there is an alternative on the Right, in the shape of Reform, explicitly promising to supplant the Tories before going for the other parties. The Tories have endured defections. To Reform. And MSP Jamie Greene who switched to the Liberal Democrats. His verdict on his erstwhile party? He reckons folk are 'completely scunnered' with the Scots Tories. Nodding towards the Tories' Westminster leader, he summons up a vision of 'Kemi-geddon.' Not, I would suggest, the most felicitous phrase. But you take his point. Ms Badenoch has scarcely inspired confidence since taking over. Her own view, delivered this week during exchanges with the Prime Minister, was that she gets better every week, while Keir Starmer gets worse. Again, less than uplifting. Trying hard. Getting better. It is all a bit like a school report delivered to a struggling pupil by a kind and supportive teacher. However, is it entirely her fault? I would suggest not. She might well get better. Except she is burdened by voter memories of her predecessors. Rishi Sunak might be exculpated somewhat. But not Boris Johnson and certainly not Liz Truss. Lest there is any danger of the voters forgetting, Labour constantly summons up the spectre of the unfunded Truss budget which so spooked the markets that she had to quit. Only this week, the Chancellor referred repeatedly to Ms Truss, as she set out her own spending plans. The Prime Minister taunted Kemi Badenoch, saying reflections of Liz Truss would continue to haunt the Tories. Yes, Kemi Badenoch has had a troubled start to her leadership. But, as one close observer noted to me, Winston Churchill would struggle to lead the Conservatives right now, given the degree of entrenched voter anger at governance past. While noting that, I would add that Tory problems are exacerbated by the presence of an alternative offer on the Right. The Tories previously dismissed UKIP. Reform appears more challenging. Is Russell Findlay happy in his role as Scottish Conservative leader? (Image: PA) And what of Holyrood? I noted recently that Russell Findlay does not seem entirely content in his role. Perhaps, one suggested to me, he was happier in his previous job as an inquisitive, investigative journalist. However, a senior insider dismisses that prospect. I was told that Mr Findlay is determined to set out a clear direction for the Scottish Tories – by differentiating them sharply from their main rivals. He will not, I was told, be 'knocked off course' by Reform. He believes that the SNP, in particular, talked up the challenge of Reform in the recent Hamilton by-election, only to witness a set-back for their own party as Labour won. The big Scottish Tory offer? Lower taxes in Scotland, including the removal of lower bands. Amounting, they say, to a substantial saving for every worker. In the past, the Scots Tories have been somewhat reluctant to pursue this route. They feared it would not be seen as credible, that they would be challenged on spending cuts. Ideologically, they fretted over departing from a UK fiscal pattern. No longer. They say they will fund tax cuts by civil service efficiency savings, an approach also backed by the Chancellor. And by cuts to Scotland's benefits bill. Read more: In response to which, John Swinney sharpens the knife he has already honed for UK Labour – and turns it upon the Scottish Conservatives, accusing both of seeking to gain electorally from enhancing poverty. Both his rivals demur. But there is more from Mr Findlay. In conference this weekend, he is projecting what he calls 'common sense' policies. Reflecting, as one insider noted to me, the 'real priorities of the Scottish people, stopping the nonsense of the political bubble.' So potholes, rather than gender reform. An end to the North Sea windfall tax. An understandable move, in keeping with Tory instincts. Except that John Swinney has already shifted ground to focus on fundamentals. And Labour's Anas Sarwar talks without ceasing about popular concerns such as the NHS. And Reform? Both UK and Scottish Tory leaders will hope to sideline them. That might prove difficult, especially given the options offered by list voting. Other factors. Reform themselves may be subject to closer scrutiny. As the Holyrood election approaches, people may turn their attention to big choices. Who forms the new devolved government which will set their taxes and control their public services? The Tories hope they can bring a distinctive perspective to that choice. They know they are down. They can only hope – and believe – they are not yet out. Brian Taylor is a former political editor for BBC Scotland and a columnist for The Herald. He cherishes his family, the theatre - and Dundee United FC
Telegraph
28 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Dominic Cummings may have just blown the grooming gangs scandal wide open
All progressives solemnly honour LGBTQIA+ Pride Month. And Islamophobia Awareness Month. And Black History Month. Plus many other such events. This is because they're passionately committed to 'raising awareness' of social injustice. So why not the grooming gangs scandal? For some reason, this is one example of social injustice which has failed to grip progressives' attention. To rectify this, I suggest we introduce Grooming Gangs Awareness Month. Fly an official Grooming Gangs Scandal flag from all public buildings. Get civil servants to wear Grooming Gangs Scandal lanyards. Then perhaps these people might finally take an interest. Then again, we may be wasting our time. In all likelihood, progressives have never lacked 'awareness' of the grooming gangs. They just didn't want anyone else to be aware of them. Which brings me to the explosive allegations made on Thursday by Dominic Cummings. In an interview with GB News, he claimed that, when he was working at the Department for Education in the early 2010s, there were 'mass cover-ups of the whole thing in Whitehall'. Are Mr Cummings's allegations true? I don't know. But then, that's why we need the full national inquiry that Labour continues to deny us. A handful of mere 'local inquiries' won't do – not least because it wouldn't be within their scope to investigate Mr Cummings's claims about what went on in Whitehall. Yesterday, incidentally, seven members of yet another grooming gang were found guilty of raping two teenage girls in Rochdale. Labour may not like Mr Cummings. But this time I think it should listen to him. And, for that matter, to the increasingly furious public. Talking Bull Personally, I was somewhat taken aback when, on Tuesday, the new chairman of Nigel Farage's Reform UK told voters that 'immigration is the lifeblood of this country, and it always has been'. I was even more surprised when, on Wednesday, he told Richard Madeley on ITV's Good Morning Britain that he was once strangled by an evil spirit masquerading as the ghost of his late grandmother. To my mind, though, Dr David Bull's most intriguing comment of the week was this. Asked whether he supports calls to ban the burqa in this country, he replied: 'I'm very anxious about the rise in people that think it is OK to hide their faces. We had a conversation yesterday about whether that was the burqa, crash helmets, scarves or whatever.' Hang on. Crash helmets? I for one have always admired Reform's bracingly no-nonsense attitude towards health-and-safety-gone-mad. But a ban on crash helmets, I feel, might be taking it a touch too far. In any case, I'm not convinced that there's a huge public clamour for such a ban. There are plenty of people who want to ban the burqa, and they have strong arguments for doing so. But I've never heard a voter say: 'I'm sorry, but I'm sick of seeing all these women walking around the streets in crash helmets. It's not as if it's their choice, either. Their husbands force them to do it. The crash helmet is a disgusting symbol of misogyny and patriarchal oppression. 'Also, crash helmets make normal human interaction impossible. When a motorcyclist zooms past me at 70mph, I expect to be able to see his face. 'Anyway, it's just not British. If motorcyclists want to wear crash helmets, they can go and do it in their own country.' Remarks like those, I would guess, aren't heard all that often in focus groups. So why Dr Bull raised the idea, entirely unprompted, in reply to a question about banning the burqa, I don't know. Still, I'm not complaining. Far from it. When I stepped down as this newspaper's parliamentary sketch writer in 2021, after 10 years, I felt that politics was in danger of becoming dull. The previous decade had teemed with the most glorious eccentrics, on Left and Right alike. Increasingly, however, they seemed to be fading from view, to be replaced by robotic regiments of Starmers and Sunaks. How wonderful it is to see a new generation coming through. Violence: a Left-wing guide I don't know whether you ever read Left-wing news outlets. But if you do, this week you'll probably have noticed something peculiar. In such outlets, the violence in Ballymena is always described as 'rioting' – yet the violence in LA is always described as 'protests'. You may well have wondered why this is. After all, both Ballymena and LA have seen cars set on fire, missiles thrown, and police officers injured. These are all very bad things. So why don't Left-wing news outlets refer to both as 'rioting'? The answer is simple. The violence in Ballymena is being perpetrated by people who are against mass immigration. The violence in LA, in contrast, is being perpetrated by people who are in favour not only of mass immigration, but of 'irregular' (i.e., illegal) immigration. And, just as importantly, they hate Donald Trump. Therefore, their actions must be made to sound understandable and legitimate. In other words: sometimes setting people's cars on fire is nasty and frightening. And sometimes it's noble and compassionate. Please update your records accordingly.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
No more Edinburgh Book Festival for me – where did it all go wrong?
One other event at the book festival I recall, for different reasons, was a session with the writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I can't remember why I went to see her now because she's the sort of harrumphing lefty who sets off my allergies, but perhaps I figured it's good to listen to a range of views, which it is. I certainly remember being irritated when she laid into Ukip as an English not a Scottish problem even though the party had just done well in Scotland at the European elections. The same sort of flawed reasoning persists now with Reform. But the audience seemed to like it. They applauded at the end, and shuffled out for tea and biscuits. I mention the Alibhai-Brown event in particular because even then, ten years ago, the problems with the Edinburgh Book Festival were starting to become obvious. The lack of diversity on the stage and in the audience, by which I particularly mean diversity of class. The weak, and sometimes execrable, chairing of events that fails to challenge or properly explore the writer's opinions and assumptions. And most important of all, the tendency to platform writers like Alibhai-Brown and unplatform or ignore writers of a different or more conservative persuasion. In the end, it meant the festival became a place I enjoyed less and less, and eventually I just stopped going. But, you know, it really is good to listen to a range of views and I'm a hopeful sort of person on the whole, so this year, like every year, I looked at the line-up on the festival website to see if there was something good and if things had changed, and I scrolled and scrolled and saw that the answer was no. Things appear to be just as bad as ever, worse in fact, and the worry is that the problems at the book festival may have started to rot it from the inside. You start to wonder: how long will it last? The most obvious symptom of the problems is the lack of diversity on stage, which is worse than ever. One of the biggest stories of the last year – and the focus of one of the biggest-selling books of the year – was the trans debate and the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of 'woman', and yet you will not find a trace of it on the festival line-up. The book in question, The Women Who Wouldn't Wheest, was edited by Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn, so why haven't they been invited? Is it because – unlike one of the big guests of the festival Nicola Sturgeon – they are seen to be on the wrong side of the debate? Yes, of course it is. Read more The chairman of the festival, Alan Little, rather gave the game away when he said the festival should be 'a place where progressive and nuanced discussion can happen in a safe and respectful space'. He's spot on with nuanced – we need it badly – but why only progressive? Why not traditionalist or conservative as well? And what's with 'safe'? It's become one of those words certain activists use to ratchet up the pressure, to hystericalise, but would the festival be unsafe because the line-up included Susan Dalgety or Lucy Hunter Blackburn? The only thing that would be unsafe would be the consensus that's dominated the festival and still does. The organisers would probably say in their defence that there would be a threat of disruption from activists – indeed, that was reason they gave for dropping Baillie Gifford as one of their sponsors. A number of activists, you will remember, a very small number, demanded the investment company be dropped on the grounds it invests in fossil fuels and sad to say, the organisers caved. They said they could not be expected to deliver a festival that was safe – there's that word again – because there was a threat of disruption from activists and so they ended their relationship with Baillie Gifford but more importantly they ended their relationship with Baillie Gifford's money. But it didn't have to be that way. First of all, if everyone buckled as quickly as the festival did over the threat of disruption to the free expression of views, we'd be in a very unpleasant place indeed; their weakness is pathetic. They could also have borrowed some of the stoicism of the Fringe which faced similar pressure over Baillie Gifford from the same sort of activists, but stood firm and it all came to nothing. To put it another way, everyone was perfectly safe. The Edinburgh Book Festival (Image: Newsquest) The organisers of the book festival also appear to be guilty of a kind of economic and practical idiocy that now threatens their future. There are some people who object to corporate sponsorship of arts events – so what: the only alternative is an increase in public money and that ain't happenin'. Baillie Gifford also invests in fossil fuels – so what: it invests far more in clean energy, and the objections of the activists led to the cancellation of a million pounds in money for the arts. The danger here is that the arts world ends up, in the words of the director of the Science Museum Ian Blatchford, eaten alive by its own piety. And the risks are particularly high for book festivals aren't they? We saw what happened to Aye Write in Glasgow when it failed to get funding from Creative Scotland; it only went ahead after a donation from the charity set up by the Lottery winner Colin Weir. The Edinburgh book festival is also going ahead this year thanks largely to a donation from Ian Rankin. But how long before the activists start digging into the personal views of the philanthropists writing cheques? And is this what they want: the arts funded by a few wealthy individuals? It doesn't sound all that progressive to me. Better, I think, to try to build more robust festivals that have a chance of lasting and that must mean some changes. First, encourage a broad diversity of views and opinions at the festival that will attract a broader and more diverse audience. Secondly, drop the piety and encourage corporate sponsorship because public money is not coming to save you. And thirdly, be robust when the activists rock up and shout 'unsafe!' They only have power because you give it to them. Reject them. Ignore them. And carry on. Mark Smith is a Herald features writer and opinion writer
